As far as human nature is concerned, it tries to define the problem and it’s corresponding solution based on the way his/her preferences and understanding of the problem. At any point, while it is true that we cannot really say which definition and solution is right, we could at-least try our best to be rational and form our conclusions on basis of facts.

Let’s consider few cases.

Traffic problems:We face traffic problems everyday and at every point in time, we blame government and police for that. If we think rationally, we would notice that the laws are already in place to enforce the lane discipline, Helmet and seatbelt usage etc. But the question is, do we follow them properly? Use of helmet or seatbelt is for our own safety but we still do not use them regularly. At this point, most people would claim that the cops should monitor and fine the rule breakers. But then, the reality is, people tend to wear helmet or seatbelt only when they notice that there is a police vehicle in front.On Mandovi Bridge, I notice this particular problem everyday. Whenever there is a traffic slowdown, people try to occupy the other lane completely without even a rational thought that this would simply convert it to traffic jam. At the end, we do get traffic jam AS EXPECTED.

Social Equality: We know that this problem exists everywhere. In India, since we believe that law can help everywhere, we have reservation systems in place. Most claim that certain communities did get benefits out of these laws. But a conscious and rational observation would show us that majority of people are still suffering from social inequality. Remember the participant in the show “Kaun Banega Crorepati”, where he mentioned that his community is still not allowed in village temple. All this, while the required laws are in place.

Criminal Activities: While the required law and enforcement agencies are in place, we still observe these cases around us.

Eve teasing: This occurs everywhere and to almost every girl. Even though every brother knows that his sister has experienced this trouble, he would ignore such incidents when it happens to “some other girl” or he himself might get involved in eve teasing activities involving “some other girls”.

Attack on parliament: We could literally say that the people involved in this have raped our national pride. As per the law, the criminal involved is already sentenced to death 8 years ago, but not yet executed.

Why am I talking about all these problems at this point in time? It’s because, all these observations bring about a larger picture. It highlights the true reality. Even though laws are in place, it has not helped in getting rid of any of these problems in first place. Now, what can we conclude with help of our rational thinking and observations?

As it could be seen, all these issues could be traced back to the individual behaviour or awareness towards social responsibility. Though we have required laws in place, we have not made any advances in raising the level of social awareness and building up of individual character.

Most of the schoolgirls face the problem if being teased by her own classmates. Most schools try to take strict actions and often follow strict punishments to avoid it. However, the problem continues. My father was principal of a school, which also happened to have such cases. However, he decided to try out a completely different solution.

While the strict actions and punishments were being taken against the students involved in teasing girls, he went ahead and started celebrating “Rakhi” festival with aim of raising the sense of brotherhood. In few days, it was noticed that it helped in making students realize their mistakes and thus, reduced the number of such cases dramatically.

When only the strict actions were being taken, students used to be careful only in school premises, but not when they used to be out of it. However, the effort to build up the character and sense of brotherhood in every boy and girl did help to handle the “out of school” cases as well.

Keep in mind, the laws can be broken and in most cases, they either help only after the incident has occurred or end up causing a bigger harm. For example, in order to make the best laws, we have only made the entire system so complicated, that a wise man has to think twice before going to court.

Law is not a medicine. Law is only a process. Following the law and order, is again an attribute of individual character or level of social awareness. Since we have failed at building up the character or social awareness, it’s pointless to ask for new laws.

Another best-known human nature is the ability to forget. Last year, there was a protest against corruption. It seemed as if we would definitely see some results. However, at this moment in present, I have no clue what happened to that protest or what’s going to happen next. There is a saying that time heals everything”. I would just add “including the good things” to it.

When there is a loss of individual character and lack of social awareness, the laws tend to be useless. This leads to a political advantage:

First make an issue out of any incident to gain political benefits

Once the issue starts affecting you as well, simply try to divert the issue with other related but less important thing, till the issue itself is forgotten. We are best at forgetting aren’t we?

Dealing with situations:

We can deal with situations either in reactive way or proper way. The reactive approach is often the result of instinct and can lead to unwanted outcomes. For example, the chance of a person getting drowned in water increases if he acts reactively. Similarly, a person beaten by snake can die before he could be treated due to his reactive actions (faster heart beats due to fear of death).

Thus we need to deal with situations in proper way. Unfortunately, we cannot think about proper way or provide proper help quickly. Thus, we should be in a position to handle the situation, till we identify a proper way, rather than being reactive.

When person is under medical emergency, First Aid is applied. If we happen to see it from other angle, we realize that it might sound stupid, as First Aid itself, does not save life. It is of no use to just apply First Aid and provide no medical aid. It just helps us in buying time before we provide the right help.

Similarly, in case of war, soldiers use a concept of cover fire. They are not aimed at a particular person, but help the group to relocate to a better location.

In martial arts, certain actions are followed only to confuse the opponent and divert his attention. Such techniques are to be followed in case the opponent is stronger as compared to you.

In industries, people try contract negotiation as a technique to buy time to properly understand the requirements and allocate team members.

Conclusion:

Lets consider it from the perspective of the recent unfortunate and horrible rape incident in Delhi. People have been:

Doing the March protest: Good way to unite people and express opinion, but such protests cannot be sustained.

Asking for a new law: On what facts and rational thinking do we believe that it would help to “Solve” the problem.

Discussing about what certain religious entity said about it: Isn’t it the easiest way of diverting people’s attention from the real problem? Ignoring all the efforts taken to raise individual character and social awareness by these entities, why spend time on discussing a “misunderstood” statement? It would not help in solving the problem but would indeed help political actions to be able to divert the attention.

Time has come to stop teaching others on what to do and what not to do. We all need to follow the path of proper enquiry to understand the world and the problems while increasing our individual character and level of social awareness. My new year’s resolution was not to change the world, but:

Can you imagine life without high speed internet access? Without it, we won’t be able to:

Enjoy services provided by sites like Youtube

Download free and opensource applications

Make video calls through services like Skype

Share screens and work from home (I hope you like it)

Seriously, high speed internet adds significant value to our daily life. Like most of my friends in India, I use BSNL Broadband to access high speed internet service at home. It provides pretty good connectivity in terms of speed and quality as shown in the screenshot below:

However, during monsoon period, I often face connectivity issues which can cause problems, especially if I want to work from home. Thus, I prefer to have alternate source of high speed internet connection as backup. I prefer this source to be wireless and stable while providing good internet speed.

While searching for another source of high speed internet access, I came across Airtel 3G. Following screenshot will show you the speeds that I get with Airtel 3G:

These screenshots show that Airtel 3G provides internet with speed which is half of what is provided by BSNL broadband. Depending on the quality of network, I can even get better speed.

To access this internet connection on my laptop, I make use of the “Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot” feature provided by my Samsung Galaxy S2 mobile phone. It’s a great device with lot of good features and this is just one of it.

I have been using the internet provided by Airtel 3G for around a month now and I am pretty much happy with it. Now I use it for most of my regular tasks and rely of BSNL broadband only to download large files.

Today, we are celebrating 60th anniversary of India’s independence. For us, 15th August is a day full of joy. Today, we remember all those great people, who sacrificed their lives for India’s freedom.

On 15th August 1947, we got freedom from British rule. We got to see this day after long struggle that lasted centuries. On this day, India got a new life and went ahead to become the largest democracy in the world. During these 60 years of independence, India faced lot of challenges and problems like natural calamities, economic crisis, epidemics, illiteracy, unemployment, terrorist activities etc. Even though, India’s freedom struggle had ended, it had to struggle to overcome these issues. And today, after 60 years, India has made good progress in field of science and technology.

But, we still have issues that we need to consider. Let’s look at some of the issues:

Politics: Quality of politics in India is not improving. Most of the political leaders lack political wisdom. It could be said that most of the time political parties play war amongst themselves. Most the time they are so busy inventing new number games that they don’t have time to look after issues faced by the country, the states and the people. It feels as if in India, parliamentary system is degrading.

Poverty: Even now, people are below the poverty line and they still face problem like malnutrition and severe epidemics. Adding to it illiteracy which results in rising unemployment.

Unemployment: This is one of the biggest problems faced by people in India. Some people end up to be unemployed, even after spending lot of money in gaining required qualifications.

Illiteracy: Even now, India is facing the problem of illiteracy. There are lots of people having no access to education. Another issue India is facing is regarding the number of students dropping out of schools. However, central government has now taken effective steps towards reducing illiteracy and number of dropouts.

Health: Though India has improved a lot to become healthy place to stay, it still needs lot of efforts towards waste management and waste treatment. Indian government has taken steps against diseases like Polio and runs mass campaign to educate people to maintain healthy environment.

Terrorism: India is facing and fighting against terrorism since its independence. Many people are killed every year. Government has to spend lot of money to counter such activities.

These are some of the issues that India is facing even after 60 years of independence. However, India has improved a lot in many fields including space science and information technology which should not be overlooked. Even after 60 years, the struggle continues…… the struggle for freedom from poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, terrorism etc.

Since independence, Goa’s politics has remained quite unstable. Having a list of 19 chief ministers in last twenty years clearly proves that fact (Considering one chief minister every 5 years, there should have been around 4 chief ministers).

Looking at the recent political happenings, it seems as there won’t be any political stability in Goa. Some MLA’s who had earlier given support to the ruling party, suddenly declared that they are withdrawing their support. They joined hands with opposition leaving the ruling party to minority. Government was told to prove its majority.

Looking at the numbers, it was clear that the ruling party was indeed in minority. However, government kept saying that they are still in majority. This was clearly, a nice attempt to fool people. While everybody was thinking over this number game, something strange took place in Assembly during vote of confidence.

Just before vote of confidence took place, Speaker restrained three MLA’s who supported opposition from voting. This made the number of opposition members equal to members of ruling party. Speaker (Who is a member of ruling party) voted in favour of ruling party. In this way, speaker saved the government. Chief minister was happy to say that he has won the number game. It was very clear that ruling party would now need speakers vote every time, to run the government.

Opposition took this issue to supreme court. However, after some days there took place another political drama. One MLA declared that he would again join the ruling party. What a mess… Right?

Let me make it clear, that I’m not talking in favour of any party. But the incident’s clearly showed how political parties are interested only in winning seats. They are least bothered about the welfare of people in state. Who is going to solve the problem of illiteracy? Who is going to solve the problem of unemployment? There are many more problems to list. Before elections, everybody claims that they are going to solve these issues. But do they have time to care about these issues, when they are so busy in playing their number game.